So I read Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut, and my big (smooth) ape brain hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it,
or about writing Beethoven’s ninth symphony….
What Galápagos Is Really About
First of all, I love movies and books that take a philosophical look at things. Mix it up with some absurd satire and I’m probably going to enjoy the experience. This book was the first Vonnegut book I have read, but his style and philosophy are remarkably unmistakable.
Humans have a big brain problem, and it is the cause of their undoing. It’s not really their fault, though; it’s almost as if evolution (which is a key theme) forgot to put the brakes on when evolving the human mind, and the only hope for the future of humanity is for nature to correct its mistake and devolve the human brain so it’s simpler, less complex, and less harmful to itself and those around it. Interestingly, this idea isn’t just fiction. I recently heard a podcast with a biologist called Robert Sapolsky. He argues that much of human behavior, especially violence, stems from conflicting traits inherited from two very different primate ancestors — one peaceful and one aggressive. Basically, our big brains are an evolutionary product layered over an unstable foundation. It’s a simple idea, really, but it did get me thinking
Maybe our big brains are a problem?
Vonnegut’s Life and How It Shaped His Writing
As is often the case with novels that stick with me, I gain a keen interest in the author, so after finishing the last page, I explored humanity’s vast archive of knowledge—YouTube videos. I wanted to absorb what I could from interviews, conversations, and whatever else I could find that I thought was interesting. A few things stood out to me. His mother committed suicide as he was training for World War II, the same war where, while fighting in the battle of the bulge, he was captured and spent much of the rest of it in a pow camp south of Dresden. Dresden, of course, was in Germany and the target of one of the fiercest bombing raids of the war. The whole city nearly burned to the ground, and as prisoners, they were tasked with shoveling the bodies of those who perished into crematoriums. A pretty grim and bleak start to a man’s life. I wonder if he thought the same thing as Rorschach in the movie Watchmen.
“Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the comedian is the only thing that makes sense.”
I suspect that reflecting on those events of his life would have profoundly shaped the way he saw the world, and given him a sort of permission to write his satirical prose with the authenticity it conveys. He doesn’t beat around the bush. The characters in Galapagos are no saints. Even Mary Hepburn does some ethically ambiguous things in the novel.
So… What’s This Book Actually About?
The novel, well the novel is in fact, (my opinion) a joke. An absurd series of events that triggers a worldwide apocalypse. Mostly due to the machinations of man, the human race wipes itself out- well nearly… A small boat with a rag tag crew and a few unscrupulous characters (and Kurt Vonneguts version of ChatGPT) manage to survive the apocalypse by marooning themselves onto the shores of the Galapagos islands.
Here, on this island, the Ghost Leon Trout, (who refused to ascend through the blue tunnel at the behest of his dead father, and had decided to stay and “see how things go”) narrates the story of how, while the human race extincted themselves due to the results of man’s big brain, this pocket of random survivors found a way for evolution to, over the course of a million years, reverse evolve the human species into an aquatic, flipper like creature with smaller brains, and smaller ambitions (Sex, food, and survival – that’s about it). The book spends most of its time jumping around in time, but Vonnegut, (in my opinion) does so smoothly and comfortably. I never felt lost and, although it is absurd and ridiculous, the story made perfect sense. His characters are real and they behave in ways that are real. In other words, they are rational until they are irrational. And there is a sort of realistic randomness to many of their deaths (which he uses asterisks to foreshadow, which I thought was weird).
Mandarax, Technology, and Human Folly
One other thing I though was interesting was his use of the “character” Mandarax. Of course it’s not really a character, but a machine. Built by the big brain of Zenji Hiroguchi. A smart phone of sorts that has access to seemingly unlimited information and knowledge. For me it seems to symbolize the irony of human progress and technology. A very intelligent device that speaks up at the wrong time and produces tons of information that is mostly useless. The inhabitants do enjoy it however, so I suppose that’s useful in itself. The machine, as intelligent as it was, was still not really able to save anybody. As much as our big brains are capable of making marvelous devices, they can’t help us with our real problem. Today it could be argued, and I have even thought this myself, that the internet has actually made our collective lives worse.
This novel was written in 1985, which is also interesting, since the real-world version of Mandarax would not be invented until twenty some years later. The Vietnam war was still fresh in American culture, and the threat of nuclear annihilation was front of mind. Combined with an economic crises and high oil prices that drove inflation and made a lot of people broke, it seems to me like the perfect backdrop for a novel that deals with the extinction of the human race.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I really did enjoy Galápagos, and not because I completely agreed with the premise, but because it got my big ape brain thinking in ways most books don’t. Vonnegut’s whole idea that our intelligence is what ruins us is not difficult to agree with. It’s hard to ignore how much damage we’ve done thanks to our ambition, ego, and overthinking. Sapolsky’s take that our brains are stuck simply juggling impulses we’re not even aware of made Vonnegut’s “big brain problem” a little more defined. Maybe evolution really did overshoot with us.
Final Thoughts
I don’t really agree with any of that, I am not a post humanist or existentialist, or even do I really believe in evolution in the sense that it is described today. I’m not dogmatic about it, I certainly could be wrong. Sapolsky is an expert in his field of study, and Vonnegut was a master story teller with a deep well to draw from. I just don’t really see how it serves us. It’s not pragmatic. It might be true but it doesn’t really do any one any good by knowing it. Kind of like the Mandarax.
But then again, what do I know… It’s not like I am ever going to write Beethoven’s ninth symphony or anything …